The Smash That Wasn't

To those involved in its creation and marketing, the Cloud Room's "Hey Now Now" seemed like a sure-fire hit-- until the label and band realized they had to negotiate the behind-the-scenes machinations of mainstream radio.

C / E / F / G: This unassuming, subtly Motown-flavored bunch of chords has an exuberant little crescendo built right into its guts, a progression that drives, among other songs, "Hey Now Now", the debut single by a band called the Cloud Room. The track also has a chorus that makes for one of those fantastically silly circular melodies (Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner", Gorillaz's "Clint Eastwood"-- hell, the Beatles' "Yesterday") that seem familiar on first listen, inspiring rightful dèjá entendu. To hear it is to get it lodged in the brainpan for days on end, churning on a loop in the background of one's commute and grooming routine. In other words, a record executive's wet dream.

In winter 2004, an aspiring New York singer-songwriter with the temerity to call himself simply "J" got a sore throat that proceeded to last unabated through the season and into spring. At the end of the fourth month, the spooked J got an HIV test. It came back positive. He tested again-- at which point the doctor took a three-week Caribbean vacation, safely locking the new results (negative) out of J's reach in her office. The basic tune for "Hey Now Now", in all its fetal-position primality, came together during the wait ("I wasn't sure where it came from-- it sounded like a children's song," the author says). Conversely, the lyrics ("We're going downtown! We'll take the bus there! Pay the bus fare! And we'll find a new reason, a new way of living") tumbled out in the rush of joy that followed.

The ecstasy proved contagious. By July 2004, the rudimentary song had floored, in chronological order, J's bandmates, family, friends, friends' friends, and a modest Luna Lounge audience that included a woman named Polsia Ryder, who ran the music arm of a media mini-empire called Gigantic. "It was such a perfect song," says Ryder when asked about her first exposure to "Hey Now Now". "There was no doubt in my mind it was a hit."

Gigantic's downtown Manhattan offices are a throwback to the heyday of the New Economy: unfinished wood, an open floor plan, a Galaga machine. The studio itself is formidable. It once belonged to Philip Glass. Apart from the studio and its outgrowth, the music label, Gigantic also operates a film and video production house, a fashion boutique, a music store, an art gallery, a party space, and, when needed, a PR company. J describes it, by way of compliment, as a collective of "enthusiastic people starting out in areas where they don't have a lot of experience."

"I approached the band as a manager first," explains Ryder. "I shopped them around, and [labels] were interested." Those included Astralwerks and Virgin. "But they all wanted to hear a full album's worth of demos, which we didn't have then." The strategy was to get "Hey Now Now" out-- the three-note chorus hook was burning a hole in everyone's pocket, and waiting a year or so to put together a full demo seemed a masochistic proposition.

Though Ryder doubted that Gigantic had the financial resources to launch a worldwide smash, she brought the band home, placing them in a curious situation where their manager was also the head of their label.

Gigantic signees get the benefit of recording in the label's studio for free, and are thus spared the notorious music-biz trap of recoupable costs. The downside to the label's largesse is that paying clients come first, and "house bands" are relegated to the few empty slots on the studio's schedule. In fall 2004, the only such slot was a week in November (The Fall, of all bands, had booked the remainder of the year). Recording later would mean missing the April deadline for delivering "Hey Now Now" to college radio. Students would go on summer vacation, and there'd be nobody left to wow.

So come November, the Cloud Room, with a new rhythm section, were ensconced in the studio recording an album. The problem was they didn't have an album to record.

Another problem was that nobody saw that as a problem.

Ryder originally brought the Cloud Room to Gigantic for a quick'n'dirty EP, hoping to get the song out while keeping the majors at bay and salivating at the same time. Before long, lawyers pressured the band to get the most out of the one-record deal by banging out an LP, which would be an easier sell to the stores and the press. Plus, they had a hit on their hands. The blogs were agog at "Hey Now Now"-- who cared how much filler it came bundled with? Everyone involved with the song was taken over by dizzy impatience-- except J. "I had a fantasy of how things would happen," he recalls, "and this was, well...the exact opposite of that."

The Cloud Room went in prepared to record five tracks in one week. They had a contractual obligation to deliver 10. In the mad scramble that followed, old, long-discarded songs were unearthed and hastily retooled, half-baked ideas were thrown straight onto tape, and lyrics were written minutes before the first vocal take. With half a day to go, the band had nine songs-- one short of an LP as defined by the label. A bare-bones acoustic ditty became the 10th track. Its coda, rechristened a "reprise," became the 11th. Done.

"It's a strange album," concedes J. "I grew up on the Stooges and Sonic Youth. This was as pop as I allowed myself to get, but I had a hard time believing that I would ever make this type of music." He hesitates, then offers: "In a way, the whole record was a vehicle for that one song."

For its part, "Hey Now Now" was now cemented in an appropriately sleek version-- dressed up in echoes and reverb, with a fashionably lazy guitar part and hyperactive hi-hats; specters of Spector and Murmur flitted in the background. It was still a hit; it could still sell an album. At this point, it had to. There was no follow-up single to speak of, or at least nothing as immediately ingratiating.

Soon, a secondary question arose: How to sell the band itself. The first photo shoot "looked like a GAP ad" and confirmed J's worst suspicions: The Cloud Room were about to be marketed as the next Franz Ferdinand. The band begged the label to take the photo off the CD, replacing it with a streaky digital shot. Since the name Cloud Room comes from an old lounge on the top floor of the Chrysler Building, J briefly entertained the idea of a 1940s sartorial vibe before coming to his senses.

The excitement over the product was such that, at first, Gigantic didn't bother hiring a PR company. All calls, so to speak, were coming from inside the house. As planned, in mid-April-- a week or so before the album's release-- the single was delivered to college and specialty radio. (The latter is the catchall name for indie-oriented shows that run in inconvenient time slots on otherwise mainstream stations.) In its first week on specialty radio, "Hey Now Now" hit No. 3 and proceeded to stay near the top for at least five weeks. It was a success for both for the Cloud Room and Gigantic. It also fueled the idea that the song could cross into the mainstream. It was being played on major stations already; surely a tune this catchy would eventually break out of its timeslot ghetto? Wasn't the whole point of specialty shows to function as Clear Channel's minor leagues?

In the meantime, college airplay leveled off. The album, slavishly structured around the single, was not going to pick up word of mouth or critical endorsements beyond the reflexively trend-spotting blogosphere. "Hey Now Now" was the LP's head, heart, and lungs. By general consensus, the rest wasn't particularly bad; it was barely there.

Most of the album's press reflected that strange imbalance. Pitchfork Media's review spent roughly 230 of its 350 words on the single. "'Hey Now Now' is perfect, and it has a good chance of being on everyone's iPods throughout the summer, but I'm not so sure that it will survive through the fall," wrote PopMatters.

At this point, either the big jump was going to happen or the album would wane and vanish. The early signs were good. The Cloud Room's first mainstream "add"-- CD101 in Columbus, Ohio-- propelled the CD into the local top ten.

The episode reinforced the label's optimism enough to make Gigantic consider enlisting the services of an independent promoter-- referred to, ironically, as an "indie"-- someone who common music-biz wisdom dictates is necessary to get your record on the radio. Nobody knows or wants to know what indies do, but you pay one several thousand dollars and your record suddenly stands a better chance of getting added to radio playlists. Everyone, of course, is welcome to make his or her own conclusions about this arrangement; New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer, for instance, made his.

After paying an indie to "service" (in the industry's icky slang) 30 or so stations, Gigantic were in for a rude awakening. Over the past two years or so, in response to the recent payola scandals, mainstream radio took its murky playlist-selection rituals even further into the smoke-filled-room terrain: many large commercial stations have acquired their own indies.

Allow me to spell out what this means: If you want your song added to a particular station, you can pay that particular station's indie. Except you wouldn't know who that person is. Who would know? Why, your indie, whom you are also paying. The most elegant part of the arrangement is that it contains absolutely no guarantees, and total deniability, on the station's side: All talks occur between two freelancers on your label's retainer.

Unable to engage in big-boy shenanigans, Gigantic tried more benign methods of promoting the Cloud Room. For the band, it meant an endless string of acoustic in-studio performances followed by brief insipid interviews and ticket giveaways (during one, an unusually excited female fan called in. It was quickly determined that she thought she won tickets to Coldplay). Gigantic even zeroed in on the above-quoted PopMatters zinger, buying several iPods for radio stations to hand out (be our ninth caller when you hear "Hey Now Now"!). It's anybody's guess how many iPods actually made it to the listeners, but the action did spur a couple more adds. And then, "after a certain point, we just didn't have the money to go on with it," says J. "I guess we were naïve enough to assume that success on one station results in adds on other stations."

Since fall 2005, the band has been in a holding pattern, waiting to see. "Hey Now Now" is reportedly doing well in Australia; the Cloud Room will make their first visit there later this spring. The band's UK boosters made the strange choice of "Blackout!" for the first single. That track stalled and, as a result, the album is yet to be released there.

"We have regrouped," says Polsia Ryder combatively. "There are 60 alternative stations out there that we need to create our own relationships with. No more indies. We'll make all our own calls. Plus, XM and Sirius are a much bigger deal now. If we get the satellite radio and the national web-streaming stations-- WOXY and KEXP-- on our side, it should be good enough. We may not even need traditional radio."

"I have to break 'Hey Now Now'. This is one song that has to get huge," she says, welling up a bit. "And we are all patient...patient and...willing to figure this out."

J seems more philosophical. "Our contract with Gigantic is technically over-- it was one year, one album-- but they're still pushing the CD," he admits with carefully calibrated ambivalence.